The present invention relates to monitoring a network, such as a network of electronic devices comprising, for example, workstations, personal computers, servers, hubs, routers, bridges, switches, (hereinafter referred to as devices of the network), and links between these devices which may be in the form of physical cable or wireless links. The network may be a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) or other types and may operate in accordance with any desired protocol.
After such a network has been installed, it is desirable for the person appointed network manager to be able to understand the technical operation of the network. In known network management systems, the manner in which the relevant data is retrieved from the managed devices, compiled and displayed has been problematic in several respects. The data received from each of the managed devices is often simply compiled and displayed as a list of data for the user to interpret.
It is known to provide automatic interrogation (xe2x80x9cdiscoveryxe2x80x9d) of the network to produce a map of the topology of the network which may be displayed on a visual display unit showing the devices and links between the devices. At its simplest, and where the device is a xe2x80x9cmanagedxe2x80x9d device, this is usually provided by interrogation using a known protocol, such as the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) protocol, of the so-called xe2x80x98agentxe2x80x99 of each device which stores the devices unique MAC address, the type of device and the MAC (Media Access Control) addresses the devices which are connected to the ports directly or indirectly.
It is desirable in this supervising capacity to be able to graphically distinguish on the network map a path between two points on a network. This is particularly useful in diagnosing problems, by tracing a path between two devices. Whilst path tracing may be a relatively simple matter where there are relatively few devices, in a complex network, the paths between two devices will not be immediately obvious and indeed it is desirable to be able to ascertain whether there is more than one such path.
The present invention provides a method for selecting a path or paths between two selected points in a network, said network comprising a plurality of points interconnected by links, comprising the steps of deleting from the method all points other than the selected two points having a single link to the remainder of the network to produce a reduced network, and repeating the deletion step until there are no points, other than the two selected points, which are connected to the remaining network by a single link.
The present invention also provides a computer program for carrying out the method of the preceding paragraph.
The present invention also provides apparatus for selecting a path or paths between two selected points in a network, said network comprising a plurality of points interconnected by links, comprising the means to delete from the selection process all points other than the selected two points having a single link to the remainder of the network to produce a reduced network, and to repeat the deletion step until there are no points, other than the two selected points, which are connected to the remaining network by a single link.